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Title: The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened
Author: Kenelm Digby
Editor: Anne MacDonell
Release Date: August 5, 2005 [EBook #16441]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Sir Kenelm Digby Knight. After the Painting by Sir Anthony Vandyke in His Majesty's
Collection at Windsor Castle]
THE CLOSET OF SIR KENELM DIGBY KNIGHT OPENED:
NEWLY EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND GLOSSARY, BY ANNE MACDONELL
LONDON: PHILIP LEE WARNER 38 ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1910
The design on the front binding of this volume reproduces a contemporary Binding (possibly by le Gascon?)
from the library of the Author, whose arms it embodies.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
THE CLOSET OF SIR KENELM DIGBY OPENED: TITLE PAGE OF THE FIRST EDITION 1 TO THE
READER 3 RECEIPTS FOR MEAD, METHEGLIN, AND OTHER DRINKS 5 COOKERY RECEIPTS 111
THE TABLE 263
APPENDIX I. SOME ADDITIONAL RECEIPTS 271 II. THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY 272 III. LIST OF
THE HERBS, FLOWERS, &C., REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT 274
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 1

NOTES 277
GLOSSARY 283
INDEX OF RECEIPTS 287
_The frontispiece is a reproduction in photogravure after the portrait of Sir Kenelm Digby by Sir Anthony
Vandyke in His Majesty's Collection at Windsor Castle, by permission._
INTRODUCTION
With the waning of Sir Kenelm Digby's philosophic reputation his name has not become obscure. It stands,
vaguely perhaps, but permanently, for something versatile and brilliant and romantic. He remains a perpetual
type of the hero of romance, the double hero, in the field of action and the realm of the spirit. Had he lived in
an earlier age he would now be a mythological personage; and even without the looming exaggeration and
glamour of myth he still imposes. The men of to-day seem all of little stature, and less consequence, beside
the gigantic creature who made his way with equal address and audacity in courts and councils, laboratories
and ladies' bowers.
So when, in a seventeenth-century bookseller's advertisement, I lighted on a reference to the curious
compilation of receipts entitled The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened, having the usual idea of him as a
great gentleman, romantic Royalist, and somewhat out-of-date philosopher, I was enough astonished at seeing
his name attached to what seemed to me, in my ignorance, outside even his wide fields of interest, to hunt for
the book without delay, examine its contents, and inquire as to its authenticity. Of course I found it was not
unknown. Though the Dictionary of National Biography omits any reference to it, and its name does not occur
in Mr. Carew Hazlitt's Old Cookery Books, Dr. Murray quotes it in his great Dictionary, and it is mentioned
and discussed in The Life of Digby by One of his Descendants. But Mr. Longueville treats it therein with too
scant deference. One of a large and interesting series of contemporary books of the kind, its own individual
interest is not small; and I commend it with confidence to students of seventeenth-century domestic manners.
To apologise for it, to treat it as if it were some freak, some unowned sin of Digby's, would be the greatest
mistake. On the contrary, its connection with his life and career is of the closest; and I make bold to assert that
of all his works, with the doubtful exception of his Memoirs, it is the one best worth reprinting. It is in no
spirit of irony that I say of him who in his own day was looked on almost as Bacon's equal, who was the
friend of Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Harvey, Ben Jonson, Cromwell, and all the great spirits of his time, the
intimate of kings, and the special friend of queens, that his memory should be revived for his skill in making
drinks, and his interest in his own and other folks' kitchens. If to the magnificent and protean Sir Kenelm must

now be added still another side, if he must appear not only as gorgeous Cavalier, inmate of courts,
controversialist, man of science, occultist, privateer, conspirator, lover and wit, but as bon viveur too, he is not
the ordinary bon viveur, who feasts at banquets prepared by far away and unconsidered menials. His interest
in cookery say, rather, his passion for it was in truth an integral part of his philosophy, and quite as serious
as his laboratory practice at Gresham College and Paris. But to prove what may seem an outrageous
exaggeration, we must first run over the varied story of his career; and then The Closet Opened will be seen to
fall into its due and important place.
Kenelm Digby owed a good deal to circumstances, but he owed most of all to his own rich nature. His family
was ancient and honourable. Tiltons originally, they took their later name in Henry III's time, on the
acquisition of some property in Lincolnshire, though in Warwickshire and Rutland most of them were settled.
Three Lancastrian Digby brothers fell at Towton, seven on Bosworth Field. To his grandfather, Sir Everard
the philosopher, he was mentally very much akin, much more so than to his father, another of the many Sir
Everards, and the most notorious one. Save for his handsome person and the memory of a fervent devotion to
the Catholic faith, which was to work strongly in him after he came to mature years, he owed little or nothing
to that most unhappy young man, surely the foolishest youth who ever blundered out of the ways of private
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 2
virtue into conspiracy and crime. Kenelm, his elder son, born July 11, 1603, was barely three years old when
his father, the most guileless and the most obstinate of the Gunpowder Plotters, died on the scaffold. The main
part of the family wealth, as the family mansion Gothurst now Gayhurst in Buckinghamshire, came from Sir
Everard's wife, Mary Mulsho; and probably that is one reason why James I acceded to the doomed man's
appeal that his widow and children should not be reduced to beggary. Kenelm, in fact, entered on his active
career with an income of £3000 a year; but even its value in those days did not furnish a youth of such varied
ambitions and such magnificent exterior over handsomely for his journey through the world. His childhood
was spent under a cloud. He was bred by a mother whose life was broken and darkened, and whose faith,
barely tolerated, would naturally keep her apart from the more favoured persons of the kingdom. Kenelm
might have seemed destined to obscurity; but there was that about the youth that roused interest; and even the
timid King James was attracted by him into a magnanimous forgetfulness of his father's offence. Nevertheless,
he could never have had the easy destiny of other young men of his class, unless he had been content to be a
simple country gentleman; and from the first his circumstances and his restless mind dictated his career,
which had always something in it of the brilliant adventurer.

Another branch of the Digbies rose as the Buckinghamshire family fell. It was a John Digby, afterwards Earl
of Bristol, who carried the news of the conspirators' design on the Princess Elizabeth. King James's gratitude
was a ladder of promotion, which would have been firmer had not this Protestant Digby incurred the dislike of
the royal favourite Buckingham. But in 1617 Sir John was English ambassador in Madrid; and it may have
been to get the boy away from the influence of his mother and her Catholic friends that this kinsman, always
well disposed towards him, and anxious for his advancement, took him off to Spain when he was fourteen,
and kept him there for a year. Nor was his mother's influence unmeddled with otherwise. During some of the
years of his minority at least, Laud, then Dean of Gloucester, was his tutor. Tossed to and fro between the
rival faiths, he seems to have regarded them both impartially, or indifferently, with an occasional adherence to
the one that for the moment had the better exponent.
His education was that of a dilettante. A year in Spain, in Court and diplomatic circles, was followed by a year
at Oxford, where Thomas Allen, the mathematician and occultist, looked after his studies. Allen "quickly
discerned the natural strength of his faculties, and that spirit of penetration which is so seldom met with in
persons of his age." He felt he had under his care a young Pico di Mirandola. It may have been now he made
his boyish translation of the Pastor Fido, and his unpublished version of Virgil's Eclogues. As to the latter, the
quite unimportant fact that he made one at all I offer to future compilers of Digby biographies. Allen till his
death remained his friend and admirer, and bequeathed to him his valuable library. The MSS. part of it Digby
presented to the Bodleian. A portion of the rest he seems to have kept; and though it is said his English library
was burnt by the Parliamentarians, it seems not unlikely that some of Allen's books were among his collection
at Paris sold after his death by the King of France.
But Kenelm was restlessly longing to taste life outside academic circles, and already he was hotly in love with
his old playmate, now grown into great beauty, Venetia Anastasia Stanley, daughter of Edward Stanley of
Tonge, in Shropshire, and granddaughter of the Earl of Northumberland. If I could connect the beautiful
Venetia with this cookery book, I should willingly linger over the tale of her striking and brief career. But
though the elder Lady Digby contributed something to The Closet Opened, there is no suggestion that it owes
a single receipt to the younger. Above Kenelm in station as she was, he could hardly have aspired to her save
for her curiously forlorn situation. Mother-less, and her father a recluse, she was left to bring herself up, and
to bestow her affections where she might. To Kenelm's ardour she responded readily; and he philandered
about her for a year or two. But his mother would hear nothing of the match; and at seventeen he was sent out
on the grand tour, the object of which, we learn from his Memoirs, was "to banish admiration, which for the

most part accompanieth home-bred minds, and is daughter of ignorance." Kenelm proved better than the ideal
set before him; and the more he travelled the more he admired.
Into this tale of love and adventure I must break with the disturbing intelligence that the handsome and
romantic and spirited youth was in all probability already procuring material for the compilation on Physick
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 3
and Chirurgery, which Hartman, his steward, published after his death. It was not as a middle-aged bon
viveur, nor as an elderly hypochondriac, that he began his medical studies, but in the heyday of youth, and
quite seriously, too. The explanation brings with it light on some other of his interests as well. When he set
out on the grand tour, his head full of love and the prospects of adventure, he found the spare energy to write
from London to a good friend of his, the Rev. Mr. Sandy, Parson of Great Lindford. In this letter the original
is in the Ashmolean Kenelm asks for the good parson's prayers, and sends him "a manuscript of elections of
divers good authors." Mr. Longueville, who gives the letter, has strangely failed to identify Sandy with the
famous Richard Napier, parson, physician, and astrologer, of the well-known family of Napier of
Merchistoun. His father, Alexander Napier, was often known as "Sandy"; and the son held the alternative
names also. Great Lindford is two and a half miles from Gothurst; and it is possible that Protestant friends,
perhaps Laud himself, urged on the good parson the duty of looking after the young Catholic gentleman.
Sandy (Napier) was also probably his mother's medical adviser: he certainly acted as such to some members
of her family. A man of fervent piety his "knees were horny with frequent praying," says Aubrey he was,
besides, a zealous student of alchemy and astrology, a friend of Dee, of Lilly, and of Booker. Very likely
Kenelm had been entrusted to Allen's care at Oxford on the recommendation of Sandy; for Allen, one of his
intimates, was a serious occultist, who, according to his servant's account, "used to meet the spirits on the
stairs like swarms of bees." With these occupations Napier combined a large medical practice in the Midlands,
the proceeds of which he gave to the poor, living ascetically himself. His favourite nephew, Richard Napier
the younger, his pupil in all these arts and sciences, was about the same age as Kenelm, and spent his holidays
at Great Lindford. The correspondence went on. Digby continued his medical observations abroad; and after
his return we find him writing to Sandy, communicating "some receipts," and asking for pills that had been
ordered. Thus we have arrived at the early influences which drew the young Catholic squire towards the art of
healing and the occult sciences. The latter he dabbled in all his life. In the former his interest was serious and
steadfast.
He remained out of England three years. From Paris the plague drove him to Angers, where the appearance of

the handsome English youth caused such commotion in the heart of the Queen Mother, Marie de Médicis, that
she evidently lost her head. His narrative of her behaviour had to be expurgated when his Memoirs were
published in 1827. He fled these royal attentions; spread a report of his death, and made his way to Italy. His
two years in Florence were not all spent about the Grand-ducal Court. His mind, keen and of infinite curiosity,
was hungering after the universal knowledge he aspired to; and Galileo, then writing his Dialogues in his
retirement at Bellosguardo, could not have been left unvisited by the eager young student. In after years,
Digby used to say that it was in Florence he met the Carmelite friar who brought from the East the secret of
the Powder of Sympathy, which cured wounds without contact. The friar who had refused to divulge the
secret to the Grand Duke confided it to him of which more hereafter.
From Florence he passed to Spain; and his arrival was happily timed probably by his ever anxious kinsman;
for a few days later Prince Charles and Buckingham landed, on the Spanish Marriage business; and so
agreeable was young Digby that, in spite of Buckingham's dislike of his name, he became part of the Prince's
household, and returned with the party in October, 1623. Court favours seemed now to open out a career for
him. King James knighted him, in what might have proved a fatal ceremony; for so tremblingly nervous of the
naked steel was the royal hand, that Buckingham had to turn the sword aside from doing damage instead of
honour. He was also made Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Prince Charles. But no other signal favours
followed these. For all his agreeableness he was not of the stuff courtiers are made of though James had a
kindness for him, and was entertained by his eagerness and ingenuity. Bacon, too, just before his death, had
come across this zealous young student of the experimental methods, and had meant, Digby said, to include an
account of the Powder of Sympathy in an appendix to his Natural History.
In Spain, Kenelm had flirted with some Spanish ladies, notably with the beautiful Donna Anna Maria
Manrique, urged thereto by gibes at his coldness; but Venetia was still the lady of his heart. Her amorous
adventures, in the meanwhile, had been more serious and much more notorious. His letters had miscarried,
and had been kept back by his mother. Venetia pleaded her belief in his death. Aubrey's account of her is a
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 4
mass of picturesque scandal. "She was a most beautiful desirable creature The young eagles had espied her,
and she was sanguine and tractable, and of much suavity (which to abuse was great pittie)." Making all
allowance for gossip, the truth seems to be that in Kenelm's absence she had been at least the mistress of Sir
Edward Sackville, afterwards the fourth Earl of Dorset; that Dorset tired of her; and on Digby's return she was
more than willing to return to her old love. But, alas! Sackville had her picture, which seemed to her

compromising. Digby, therefore, having accepted her apologies and extenuations, challenged Sackville to a
duel; whereupon the faithless one proved at least magnanimous; refused to fight, gave up the picture, and
swore that Venetia was blameless as she was fair. A private marriage followed; and it was only on the birth of
his second son John that Sir Kenelm acknowledged it to the world. To read nearly all his Memoirs is to
receive the impression that he looked on his wife as a wronged innocent. To read the whole is to feel he knew
the truth and took the risk, which was not very great after all; for the lady of the many suitors and several
adventures settled down to the mildest domesticity. They say he was jealous; but no one has said she gave him
cause. The tale runs that Dorset visited them once a year, and "only kissed her hand, Sir Kenelm being by."
But Digby was a good lover. All the absurd rhodomontade of his strange Memoirs notwithstanding, there are
gleams of rare beauty in the story of his passion, which raise him to the level of the great lovers. His Memoirs
were designed to tell "the beginning, progress, and consummation of that excellent love, which only makes
me believe that our pilgrimage in this world is not indifferently laid upon all persons for a curse." And here is
a very memorable thing. "Understanding and love are the natural operation of a reasonable creature; and this
last, which is a gift that of his own nature must always be bestowed, being the only thing that is really in his
power to bestow, it is the worthiest and noblest that can be given."
But, as he naïvely says, "the relations that follow marriage are a clog to an active mind"; and his kinsman
Bristol was ever urging him to show his worth "by some generous action." The result of this urging was
Scanderoon. His object, plainly stated, was to ruin Venetian trade in the Levant, to the advantage of English
commerce. The aid and rescue of Algerian slaves were afterthoughts. King James promised him a
commission; but Buckingham's secretary, on behalf of his master absent in the Ile de Ré, thought his
privileges were being infringed, and the King drew back. Digby acted throughout as if he had a "publike
charge," but he was really little other than a pirate. He sailed from Deal in December, 1627, his ships the
"Eagle" and the "George and Elizabeth." It was six months before the decisive fight took place; but on the
way he had captured some French and Spanish ships near Gibraltar; and what with skirmishes and sickness,
his voyage did not want for risk and episode at any time. Digby the landsman maintained discipline,
reconciled quarrels, doctored his men, ducked them for disorderliness, and directed the naval and military
operations like any old veteran. At Scanderoon [now Alexandretta in the Levant] the French and Venetians,
annoyed by his presence, fired on his ships. He answered with such pluck and decision that, after a three
hours' fight, the enemy was completely at his mercy, and the Venetians "quitted to him the signiority of the
roade." In his Journal of the Voyage you may read a sober account, considering who was the teller of the tale,

of a brilliant exploit. He does not disguise the fact that he was acting in defiance of his own countrymen in the
Levant. The Vice-Consul at Scanderoon kept telling him that "our nation" at Aleppo "fared much the worse
for his abode there." He was setting the merchants in the Levant by the ears, and when he turned his face
homewards, the English were the most relieved of all. His exploit "in that drowsy and inactive time was
looked upon with general estimation," says Clarendon. The King gave him a good welcome, but could not
follow it up with any special favour; for there were many complaints over the business, and Scanderoon had
to be repudiated.
But Digby could not be merely privateer, and in the Scanderoon expedition we are privileged to look on the
Pirate as a Man of Taste. His stay in Florence had given him an interest in the fine arts; and at Milo and
Delphos he contrived to make some healthy exercise for his men serve the avidity of the collector. Modern
excavators will read with horror of his methods. "I went with most of my shippes to Delphos, a desert island,
where staying till the rest were readie, because idlenesse should not fixe their mindes upon any untoward
fansies (as is usuall among seamen), and together to avayle myselfe of the convenience of carrying away some
antiquities there, I busied them in rolling of stones doune to the see side, which they did with such eagernesse
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 5
as though it had been the earnestest business that they had come out for, and they mastered prodigious massie
weightes; but one stone, the greatest and fairest of all, containing four statues, they gave over after they had
been, 300 men, a whole day about it But the next day I contrived a way with mastes of shippes and another
shippe to ride over against it, that brought it doune with much ease and speede"! What became of this treasure
so heroically acquired?
So much for art. Literature was to have its turn with the versatile pirate ere he reached his native shores.
During a time of forced inaction at Milo, he began to write his Memoirs. A great commander was expected
during a truce, it appears, to pay lavish attentions to the native ladies. Neglect of this gallantry was construed
almost as a national insult. Sir Kenelm, faithful to his Venetia, excused himself on the plea of much business.
But he had little or no business; and he used his retirement to pen the amazing account of his early life and his
love story, where he appears as Theagenes and his wife as Stelliana, as strange a mixture of rhodomontade
and real romance as exists among the autobiographies of the world. Of course it does not represent Digby at
his maturity. Among his MSS. the Memoirs were found with the title of Loose Fantasies, and they were not
printed till 1827.
It was quite a minor post in the Navy he received in recognition of Scanderoon, and one wonders why he took

it. Perhaps to gain experience, of which he was always greedy. Or Scanderoon may have emptied his
treasuries. After the Restoration he had a hard struggle to get repaid for his ransom of slaves on the Algerian
coast. At any rate, as Naval Commissioner he earned the reputation of a hard-working public servant.
If his constantly-changing life can be said to have had a turning-point, it occurred in 1633, when his wife died
suddenly. The death of the lovely Venetia was the signal for a great outburst of vile poetry on her beauty and
merits. Ben Jonson, her loyal friend and Kenelm's, wrote several elegies, one of them the worst. Vandyck
painted her several times; and so the memory of her loveliness is secure. As to her virtues, amiability seems to
have been of their number. "Unmatcht for beauty, chaster than the ayre," wrote one poet. When they opened
her head it was discovered she had little brain; and gossip attributed the fact to her having drunk
viper-wine by her husband's advice for her complexion. This sounds absurd only to those who have not
perused the Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery. Little brain or not, her husband praised her wits. Ben Jonson
wrote with devotion of her "who was my muse, and life of all I did."
Digby imitated his father-in-law who, in similar circumstances, gave himself up to solitude and recollection.
His place of retirement was Gresham College. Do its present students remember it once housed a hermit who
"wore a long mourning cloake, a high crowned hat, his beard unshorne as signes of sorrowe for his beloved
wife"? There "he diverted himself with chymistry and the professor's good conversation." He had "a fair and
large laboratory erected under the lodgings of the Divinity Reader." Hans Hunneades the Hungarian was his
operator.
But another influence was at work. For the first time his mind turned seriously to religion. Romanist friends
were persuading him to his father's faith. His old tutor Laud and other Protestants were doing their best to
settle him on their side. Out of the struggle of choice he came, in 1636, a fervent and convinced Catholic. He
was to prove his devotion over and over again; but I fear that Catholics of to-day would view with suspicion
his views on ecclesiastical authority. In his dedication of his Treatise on the Soul to his son Kenelm, there is a
spirited defence of the right, of the intelligent to private judgment in matters of doctrine. Nevertheless, his
Catholicism, though rationalist, was sincere, and he spent much energy in propaganda among his
friends witness his rather dull little brochure, the Conference with a Lady about Choice of Religion (1638),
and his correspondence with his kinsman, Lord Digby, who did, indeed, later, come over to the older faith.
Ere long he earned the reputation of being "not only an open but a busy Papist," though "an eager enemy to
the Jesuits."
From this time dates his close friendship with the Queen, Henrietta Maria, and her Catholic friends, Sir Tobie

Matthew, Endymion Porter, and Walter Montague. He and Montague were specially chosen by the Queen to
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 6
appeal to the English Catholics for aid towards Charles's campaign in Scotland. Digby was certainly a hot
inciter of the King to foolish activity; but in the light of his after history, it would seem always with a view to
the complete freedom of the Catholic religion. A prominent King's man, nay, a Queen's man, which was held
to be something extremer, he played, however, an individual part in the struggle. He was well fitted for the
Cavalier rôle by the magnificence of his person, by his splendid hospitality, his contempt for sects, his
aristocratic instincts, and his manner of the Great World. But if he liked good cheer and a great way of living,
he is never to be imagined as clinking cans with a "Hey for Cavaliers! Ho for Cavaliers!" He never fought for
the King's cause though he fought a duel in Paris with a French lord who took Charles's name in vain, and
killed his man too. His rôle was always the intellectual one. He conspired for the cause chiefly, I think, out of
personal friendship, and because he held it to be the cause of his Church. He was not a virulent politician; and
on the question of divine right the orthodox Cavaliers must have felt him to be very unsound indeed.
The era of Parliaments had now come, and Digby was to feel it. He was summoned to the bar of the House as
a Popish recusant. Charles was ordered to banish him and Montague from his councils and his presence; and
their examination continued at intervals till the middle of 1642. The Queen interceded for Digby with much
warmth, but she was a dangerous friend; and in the same year Montague and he were sent to prison. I have
heard a tradition that Crosby Hall was for a time his comfortable jail, but can find no corroboration of this.
The serjeant-at-arms confined him for a brief space at The Three Tuns, near Charing Cross, "where his
conversation made the prison a place of delight" to his fellows. Later, at Winchester House, Southwark, where
he remained in honourable confinement for two years, he was busy with writing and experimenting to
preserve him from "a languishing and rusting leisure." Two pamphlets, both of them hasty improvisations, one
a philosophic commentary on a certain stanza of the _Faërie Queen_, the other, his well-known _Observations
on the 'Religio Medici'_, are but mere bubbles of this seething activity, given over mostly to the preparation of
his Two Treatises, "Of the Body," and "Of the Soul," published later in Paris, and to experiments on
glass-making.
Many efforts were made for his release, the most efficacious by the Queen of France. It should have been the
Dowager Marie de Médicis, in memory of her hot flame for him when he was a youth; but though she may
have initiated the appeal, she died before his release, which he seems to have owed to Anne of Austria's good
services. Freedom meant banishment, but this sentence he did not take very seriously. In these years he was

continually going and coming between France and England, now warned by Parliament, now tolerated, now
banished, again daring return, and escaping from the net. "I can compare him to nothing but to a great fish that
we catch and let go again; but still he will come to the bait," said Selden of him in his _Table-Talk_.
Exile in Paris provided fresh opportunity for scientific study, though his connection with the English Catholic
malcontents, and his services to the Queen Henrietta Maria, who now made him her Chancellor, absorbed
much of his time. When the Cause needed him, the Cavalier broke away from philosophy; and in 1645 he set
out for Rome, at the bidding of the Queen, to beg money for her schemes. With all his address, diplomacy was
not among the chief of his talents. With high personages he took a high tone. Innocent X gave 10,000 crowns
to the Cause; but they quarrelled; and the Pope went so far as to accuse Digby of misappropriation of the
money. Digby, a man of clean hands, seems to have taken up the Queen's quarrel. She would have nothing to
do with Rinuccini's Irish expedition, which his Holiness was supporting; and her Chancellor naturally insisted
on disbursing the funds at her commands rather than at the Pope's. Moreover, he was now renewing his
friendship with Thomas White, a heretic Catholic priest, of several aliases, some of whose work had been
placed on the Index. White was a philosophic thinker of considerable power and subtlety, and he and Digby
acted and reacted on each other strongly though Digby's debt is perhaps the greater. Their respective parts in
the Two Treatises and in the Institutionum Peripateticorum libri quinque, published under White's name, but
for which Sir Kenelm is given the main credit, can hardly now be sifted. White, at all events, was not a
prudent friend for an envoy to the Holy See. Digby "grew high and hectored with his holinesse, and gave him
the lye. The pope said he was mad." Thus Aubrey. Henrietta Maria sent him once more on the same errand;
but the Roman Curia continued to look on him as a "useless and restless man, with scanty wisdom." Before
returning, however, he paid a round of visits to Italian courts, making everywhere a profound impression by
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 7
his handsome person and his liveliness. He had to hasten back to England on his own business. His fortunes
were desperate; and he desired to compound for his estates.
A week or so after the King's death he is proved by his correspondence to be in France, having fled after one
more pronouncement of him as a dangerous man. He went into exile this time with a sad heart; and it was not
only the loyalist in him that cried out. The life of an English country gentleman would never have satisfied
him; yet he longed for it now it had become impossible. He writes from Calais to a friend: "Those innocent
recreations you mention of tabors and pipes, and dancing ladies, and convenient country houses, shady walks
and close arbours, make one sigh to be again a spectator of them, and to be again in little England, where time

slides more gently away than in any part of the world. _Quando sia mai ch'a rividerti io torno_?"
He went this time knowing better than his fellow royalists the meaning of events. He was still a rank, but at
least an intelligent, conspirator. English correspondents at Rouen and Caen report him in the company of one
Watson, an Independent; and that he is proposing "to join the interests of all the English papists with the
bloody party that murdered the king." Dr. Winsted, an English doctor in Rouen, asked him with indignation
how he could meditate going back to England, "considering the abomination of that country." Digby replied
that he was forced to it. "If he went not now he must starve." He plainly saw who was the real and only force
in England; and he was going to make a bargain with the strong man for himself and his co-religionists. As a
matter of fact there is no trace of his return at this moment. Not merely was his property in danger, but his
head as well. Yet he never repented of his policy, and he carried it out, so far as might be, in his dealings with
Cromwell a few years later. And Henrietta Maria bore him no grudge on this score.
Exile in Paris meant friendly intercourse with, and consolation of the Queen, but also scientific research. In
1651 Evelyn was visiting him there, and being stirred by his enthusiasm into attending Fébur's chemistry
lectures along with him. Before that must have taken place his pilgrimage to Descartes, who died in 1650.
Apparently Sir Kenelm had gone to Egmont as an unknown stranger; and it throws light on his wide
reputation as a man of ideas and a conversationalist, that into his torrent of questions and speculation
Descartes broke with, "You can be none other than Digby." The English scientist's practical mind for he had
always a practical end in view, however fantastic his methods showed itself in his counsel to the author of
the _Discours sur la Méthode_. Why all this labour for mere abstract speculation? Why not apply his genius to
the one great subject, the prolongation of human life? Descartes, it appears, did not need the advice. He said
the subject was engaging his mind; and though he "dared not look forward to man being rendered immortal,
he was quite certain his length of life could be made equal to the patriarch's." In fact, he was composing at the
time an _Abrégé de Médecine_, and popular report said he believed men could live four or five hundred years.
He died prematurely of too much faith in his own medical theories.
In 1653 permission was given to Digby to return, on condition he would not meddle with Royalist plots. He
had been in communication with Cromwell, and had done some diplomatic business for him in Paris. On his
return in 1654, and for the next few years, he was in the closest relations with the Protector, thereby carrying
out the principle he had probably adopted from White, of a "universal passive obedience to any species of
government that had obtained an establishment." His Royalist friends made an outcry, and so did the Puritans;
but Digby was confident of obtaining from Cromwell great advantages for the English Catholics, and the

Protector, it seems, fully trusted the intentions and the abilities of this strange and fascinating personality who
came to him out of the enemy's camp. Delicate business was given into his hands, that of preventing an
alliance between France and Spain. Prynne, in his True and Perfect Narrative, bitterly denounced Cromwell
in "that Sir Kenelme Digby was his particular favourite, and lodged at Whitehall; that Maurice Conry,
Provincial of the Franciscans in England, and other priests, had his protections under hand and seal." Of
Digby's feelings towards Cromwell there is clear evidence. It seems his loyalty had been questioned in his
absence; and he writes from Paris, in March, 1656, to Secretary Thurloe: "Whatsoever may be disliked by my
Lord Protector and the Council of State must be detested by me. My obligations to his Highness are so great,
etc." And again, "How passionate I am for his service and for his honour and interest, even to exposing my
life for him." The intimacy, begun on both sides in mere policy, had evidently grown to friendship and mutual
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 8
admiration.
The illness of which he died had already attacked him, and it was for his health he went to Montpelier in
1658. His stay in that seat of learning was made memorable by his reading to a company of eminent persons
his Discourse on the Powder of Sympathy, which has brought him more fame and more ridicule than anything
else. I have already referred to the secret confided to him as a youth in Florence by the Carmelite Friar from
the East. When he came back to England he spoke of the great discovery, and had occasion to use it.
Howell of the _Familiar Letters_ was, according to Sir Kenelm's account, wounded while trying to part two
friends who were fighting a duel. His wounds were hastily tied up with his garter, and Digby was sent for.
Digby asked for the garter-bandage, and steeped it in a basin in which he had dissolved his secret powder (of
vitriol). Immediately Howell felt a "pleasing kind of freshnesse, as it were a wet cold napkin did spread over
my hand." "Take off all the plasters and wrappings," said Digby. "Keep the wound clean, and neither too hot
nor too cold." Afterwards he took the bandage from the water, and hung it before a great fire to dry;
whereupon Howell's servant came running to say his master was much worse, and in a burning fever. The
bandage plunged once more in the dissolved powder, soothed the patient at a distance; and in a few days the
wound was healed. Digby declared that James and Buckingham were interested witnesses of the cure; and the
king "drolled with him about it (which he could do with a very good grace)." He said he divulged the secret to
the Duke of Mayenne. After the Duke's death his surgeon sold it so that "now there is scarce any country
barber but knows it." Why did not Digby try it on his wounded men at Scanderoon? His Discourse to the
learned assembly is a curious medley of subtle observation and old wives' tales, set out in sober, orderly, one

might almost say scientific, fashion. Roughly, the substance of it may be summed up as "Like to like." The
secret powder is a medium whereby the atoms in the bandage are drawn back to their proper place in the
body! After Digby's death you could buy the powder at Hartman's shop for sixpence.
At the Restoration he returned to England. He was still Henrietta Maria's Chancellor. His relations with
Cromwell had never broken their friendship; and probably he still made possets for her at Somerset House as
he had done in the old days. But by Charles II there was no special favour shown him, beyond repayment for
his ransom of English slaves during the Scanderoon voyage; and in 1664 he was forbidden the Court. The
reason is not definitely known. Charles may have only gradually, but at last grimly, resented, the more he
learnt of it, Digby's recognition of the usurper.
He found happiness in science, in books, in conversation, in medicine, stilling and cookery. In 1661 he had
lectured at Gresham College on The Vegetation of Plants. When the Royal Society was inaugurated, in 1663,
he was one of the Council. His house became a kind of academy, where wits, experimentalists, occultists,
philosophers, and men of letters worked and talked. This was the house in Covent Garden. An earlier one is
also noted by Aubrey. "The faire howses in Holbourne between King's Street and Southampton Street (which
brake-off the continuance of them) were, about 1633, built by Sir Kenelme; where he lived before the civill
warres. Since the restauration of Charles II he lived in the last faire house westward in the north portico of
Covent Garden, where my lord Denzill Hollis lived since. He had a laboratory there." This latter house, which
can be seen in its eighteenth-century guise in Hogarth's print of "Morning," in The Four Hours of the Day set,
is now the quarters of the National Sporting Club. There he worked and talked and entertained, made his
metheglin and _aqua vitæ_ and other messes, till his last illness in 1665. Paris as ever attracted him; and in
France were good doctors for his disease, the stone. He had himself borne on a litter to the coast; but feeling
death's hand on him, he turned his face homeward again, and died in Covent Garden, June 11, 1665. In his
will he desired to be buried by his beautiful Venetia in Christ Church, Newgate, and that no mention should
be made of him on the tomb, where he had engraved four Latin inscriptions to her memory. But Ferrar wrote
an epitaph for him:
"Under this tomb the matchless Digby lies, Digby the great, the valiant, and the wise," etc.
The Great Fire destroyed the tomb, and scattered their ashes.
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 9
He had died poor; and his surviving son John, with whom he had been on bad terms, declared that all the
property that came to him was his father's sumptuously compiled history of the Digby family. Apparently

John regained some part of the estates later, which perhaps had only been left away from him to pay off debts.
A great library of Sir Kenelm's was still in Paris; and after his death it was claimed by the French king, and
sold for 10,000 crowns. His kinsman, the second Earl of Bristol, bought it, and joined it to his own; and the
catalogue of the combined collection, sold in London in 1683, is an interesting and too little tapped source for
Digby's mental history. Of his five children, three were already dead. Kenelm, his eldest son, had fallen at St.
Neot's, in 1648, fighting for the King. It was his remaining son John who sanctioned the publication of his
father's receipts.
* * * * *
Sir Kenelm Digby has been recognised as the type of the great amateur, but always with a shaking of the head.
Why this scorn of accomplished amateurs? Rather may their tribe increase, let us pray. Our world languisheth
now for lack of them. He was fitted by nature to play the rôle superbly, to force his circumstances, never over
pliant, to serve not his material interests, but his fame, his craving for universal knowledge and attainments.
Says Wood: "His person was handsome and gigantick, and nothing was wanting to make him a compleat
Cavalier. He had so graceful elocution and noble address that had he been dropped out of the clouds into any
part of the world, he would have made himself respected; but the Jesuits who cared not for him, spoke
spitefully, and said it was true, but then he must not stay there above six weeks. He had a great faculty, which
proceeded from abundance of wit and invention, of proposing and reporting matters to the Virtuosi."
Women adored him; and he took great pains to please them though in spite of the importunities of Marie de
Médicis, the long friendship with Henrietta Maria, his early flirtation with the lovely Spaniard, his earnest and
impolitic championship of the notorious Lady Purbeck Romish convert and adventuress Venetia, it seems,
remained his only love. He was never the mere gallant. He treated women as his intellectual equals, but as
equals who had to be splendidly entertained and amused. His conversation was "ingeniose and innocent."
Lloyd speaks of "the grace wherewith he could relate magnarum rerum minutias, the little circumstances of
great matters." But men were at his feet as well; and on his tour among Italian courts, one of the grandees said
that, "having no children, he was very willing his wife should bring him a Prince by Sir Kenelme, whom he
imagined the just measure of perfection."
A first-rate swordsman, yet was he "not apt in the least to give offence." His strength was that of a giant.
Bristol related that one day at Sherborne he took up "a midling man," chair and all, with one arm. But there
was nothing of the swashbuckler about him, and his endless vitality was matched by his courtesy. True, he
hustled a Pope; but he addressed the Short Parliament in such reverential terms as no Roundhead could have

found. One who had been courtier, exile, naval commander, student, prisoner, and diplomatist, who had
associated with all sorts of persons, from kings to alchemists and cooks, had learnt resourcefulness. But he
was never too hard put to it perhaps, seeing that "if he had not fourpence, wherever he came he would find
respect and credit." "No man knew better how to abound, and to be abased, and either was indifferent to him."
He had his detractors. One who plays so many parts incites envy and ridicule; and he laid himself particularly
open to both. Fantasy was in the Digby blood; and that agility of mind and nerve that turns now here, now
there, to satisfy an unquenchable curiosity, that exuberance of mental spirits that forces to rapid and
continuous expression, has ever been suspect of the English mind. He was "highly caressed in France." To
Evelyn Sir Kenelm was a "teller of strange things," and again the Diarist called him "an errant
mountebank" though Evelyn sought his society, and was grateful for its stimulus. Lady Fanshawe, who met
him at Calais, at the Governor's table, says he "enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be
averred That was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most excellent parts, and a very fine bred
gentleman." "A certain eccentricity and unsteadiness perhaps inseparable from a mind of such vanity," is
Lodge's criticism. "The Pliny of our age for lying," quoth Stubbes. But Digby's extraordinary stories were by
no means all false. He may have talked sometimes to _épater le bourgeois;_ but his serious statements were
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 10
often judged as were the wonders of evolution by country audiences in the seventies.
His offence was he must always be talking. His ideas he must share, expound, illustrate, whether or no they
were ripe. It is the sign-manual of the sincere amateur. His books are probably but the lees of his conversation.
He was not, in the first place, a literary person. His Memoirs are good reading for those with a touch of the
fantastic in themselves; but the average literary critic will dub them rhodomontade. His scientific and
controversial treatises, not at all unreadable, and full of strange old lore, survive as curiosities never to be
reprinted. Nevertheless, his temper was distinctly scientific, and if his exact discoveries be limited to
observing the effect of oxygen on plant-life, and his actual invention to a particular kind of glass bottle, yet he
was an eager student and populariser of the work of Bacon, Galileo, and Harvey; and his laboratories were the
nursing grounds of the new experimental philosophy.
With a distinctly rationalistic temper, he was yet a faithful, if independent, son of the Roman Church. He
speaks sometimes as if he regarded the Church as the great storehouse of necessary authority for the
intellectually feeble; but he accepted the main dogmas himself, being satisfied of them by intuition and
reason. Protestantism, he held, was not for the ordinary person, considering "the natural imbecility of man's

wits and understandings." His piety was a thing apart, a matter of heredity perhaps, and of his poetic
temperament. I have heard him called by that abused name, "mystic." He was nothing of the sort, and he said
so in memorable words. As an act of devotion he translated the Adhering to God of Albertus Magnus. In the
dedication to his mother he compares himself, as the translator of this mystic treatise, to certain travellers who
"speak upon hearsay of countries they were never in." "The various course in the world that I have runne
myself out of breath in, hath afforded me little means for solid recollection." Yet was he now and then upon
the threshold. With streaks of the quack and adventurer in him, he gave out deep notes. Says Lloyd: "His soul
[was] one of those few souls that understand themselves."
With an itch to use his pen as well as his tongue, he had none of the patience, the hankering after perfection of
form, of the professional man of letters. His account of his Scanderoon exploit, a sea-log, a little written-up
later, was perhaps not meant for publication. It did not see the light till 1868. His Memoirs were written, he
says, "for my own recreation, and then continued and since preserved only for my own private content to
please myself in looking back upon my past and sweet errors." He even begs those who may come upon the
MS. "to convert these blotted sheets into a clear flame." His commentary on the _Faëry Queen_ stanza was
thrown off in a hurry. "The same Discourse I made upon it the first half quarter of an hour that I saw it, I send
you there, without having reduced it to any better form, or added anything at all to it." And so for the
better-known and interesting _Observations on 'Religio Medici.'_ Browne reproached him for his review of a
pirated edition. Digby replied he had never authorised its publication, written as it was in twenty-four hours,
which included his procuring and reading the book a truly marvellous _tour de force_; for the thing is still
worth perusal. He was always the improvisor ready, brilliant, vivid, imperfect. He must give vent to the ideas
that came upon him in gusts. "The impressions which creatures make upon me," he says, "are like boisterous
winds." He fully recognised his own limitations. "I pretend not to learning," he declares, with exaggerated
modesty. Amateur and improviser of genius, let us praise him as such. The spacious, generous minds that can
find room for all the ideas and culture of an epoch are never numerous enough. There is no one like such
amateurs for bridging two ages; and Digby, with one hand in Lilly's and the other in Bacon's, joins the
mediæval to the modern world. Nor is a universal amateur a genius who has squandered his powers; but a man
exercising his many talents in the only way possible to himself, and generally with much entertainment and
stimulus to others. It was Ben Jonson, too great a man to be one of his detractors on this score, who wrote of
him:
"He is built like some imperial room For that[1] to dwell in, and be still at home. His breast is a brave palace,

a broad street, Where all heroic ample thoughts do meet; Where nature such a large survey hath ta'en As other
souls to his, dwelt in a lane."
[Footnote 1: All virtue.]
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 11
There was nothing singular in his interest in astrology and alchemy. Lilly and Booker, both of them among his
acquaintances, were ordered to attend the parliamentary army at the siege of Colchester, "to encourage the
soldiers with predictions of speedy victory." Still though he believed in greater absurdities his attitude
towards such matters was that of his chosen motto, _Vacate et Videte._ "To rely too far upon that vaine art I
judge to be rather folly than impiety." As with regard to spirits and witches, he says, "I only reserve my
assent." That he was not altogether absorbed in the transmutation of metals in his laboratory practice, and yet
that he dabbled in it, makes him historically interesting. In him better than in Newton do we realise the temper
of the early members of the Royal Society. In this tale of his other activities I have not forgotten The Closet
Opened. Of all Digby's many interests the most constant and permanent was medicine. How to enlarge the
span of man's life was a problem much meditated on in his age. We have seen how Descartes's mind ran on it;
and in Bacon's Natural History there is reference to a 'book of the prolongation of life.' In spite of what is
written on his Janssen hermit portrait _Saber morir la mayor hazanza_ Digby loved life. His whole
exuberant career is a pæan to life, for itself and its great chances, and because "it giveth the leave to vent and
boyle away the unquietnesses and turbulences that follow our passions." To prolong life, fortify it, clarify it,
was a noble pursuit, and he set out on it as a youth under the tuition of the 'good parson of Lindford. His
Physick and Chirurgery receipts, published by Hartman, are many of them incredible absurdities, not
unfrequently repulsive; but when we compare them with other like books of the time, they fit into a natural
and not too fantastic place. Sir Thomas Browne was laughing at Digby, but not at Digby alone, in the passage
in _Vulgar Errors_ "when for our warts we rub our hands before the moon, or commit any maculated part
unto the touch of the dead." Sir Kenelm gathered his receipts on all his roads through Europe, noted them
down, made them up with his own hands, and administered them to his friends. In Hartman's Family
Physician is given "An experienced Remedy against the Falling Sicknes, wherewith Sir K. Digby cur'd a
Minister's Son at Franckfort in Germany, in the year 1659." It begins, "Take the Skull of a Man that died of a
Violent Death." (Hartman says he helped to prepare the ghastly concoction.) I have already noted how he
doctored his beautiful wife's complexion; and how he was called in to cure Howell's wound. In a poetic tribute
he is referred to as:

"Hee, that all med'cines can exactly make, And freely give them."
Evelyn records how Digby "advised me to try and digest a little better, and gave me a water which he said was
only raine water of the autumnal equinox exceedingly rectified, and smelt like aqua fortis."
Here, at last, we have come to the end of Sir Kenelm the amateur. If he was an empiric, so were all the doctors
of his time; and he may be described as a professional unpaid physician who carried on a frequently
interrupted practice. That he did not publish his receipts himself does not reflect on his own idea of their
importance. They had a wide circulation among his friends. And, as I have pointed out, he never showed great
eagerness to publish. Such works as appeared in his lifetime were evidently printed at the request of learned
societies, or by friends to whom they were dedicated, or by White.
The distance between the healer and the cook has grown to be immense in recent times. The College of
Physicians and Mary Jane in the kitchen are not on nodding terms though one sees faint signs of an effort to
bridge the wide gap. But in the seventeenth century the gap can hardly be said to have existed at all. At the
back of the doctor is plainly seen the figure of the herbalist and simpler, who appear again prominently in the
still-room and the kitchen, by the side of great ladies and great gentlemen, bent on making the best and the
most of the pleasures of the table no doubt, but quite as much on the maintenance of health as of hospitality.
Simpler, herbalist, doctor, distiller, cook Digby was all of them, and all of them with the utmost seriousness;
nor in this was he in the least singular. The great Bacon was deeply concerned with such cares, though in
certain of his recommendations, such as: "To provide always an apt break-fast," to take this every morning,
not to forget to take that twice a month, one may read more of the valetudinarian than in Digby. The Closet
Opened is but one of an interesting series of books of the kind, which have been too much neglected by
students of seventeenth-century manners and lore and language. Did not W.J. issue the Countess of Kent's
Choice Manual of Physic and Chirurgey, with directions for Preserving and Candying? Patrick, Lord
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 12
Ruthven's _Ladies' Cabinet Opened_ appeared in 1639 and 1655. Nor was it only the cuisine of the nobles that
roused interest. One of the curiosities of the time is _The Court and Kitchen of Elizabeth, commonly called
Joan Cromwell, the Wife of the Late Usurper Truly Described and Represented and now made Publick for
general Satisfaction,_ 1644. The preface is scurrilous beyond belief. Compiled from the gossip of servants, it
is meant to cast ridicule on the housekeeping of the Protector's establishment. But the second part is a sober
collection of by no means very penurious recipes from Joan's own kitchen books.
Hartman, his steward, made an excellent thing out of Digby's receipts though the publishing of The Closet

Opened was not his doing, I think. His Choice and Experimented Receipts in Physick and Chirurgery had
already appeared in 1668, which suggested to some other hanger-on of the Digby household that John Digby's
consent might be obtained for printing Sir Kenelm's culinary as well as his medical note-books. Hartman
followed up this new track with persistence and profit to himself. As a mild example of the "choice and
experimented," I transcribe "An Approved Remedy for Biting of a Mad Dog": "Take a quart of Ale, and a
dram of Treacle, a handful of Rue, a spoonful of shavings or filings of Tin. Boil all these together, till half be
consumed. Take of this two spoonfuls in the morning, and at night cold. It is excellent for Man or Beast." I
need not continue. The receipts are there for curious searchers. They were applied to aristocratic patients; and
they are no more absurd or loathsome than those of other books of the time and kind. Even Bacon is fantastic
enough with his "Grains of Youth" and "Methusalem Water." In 1682, George Hartman published, "for the
Publike Good," The True Preserver and Restorer of Health. It is dedicated to the Countess of Sunderland, and
is described as "the collection for the most part (which I had hitherto reserved) of your incomparable kinsman
and my truly Honourable Master, Sir Kenelm Digby, whom I had the Honour to serve for many years beyond
the Seas, as well as in England; and so continued with him till his dying Day, and of whose Generosity and
Bounty I have sufficiently tasted, and no less of your illustrious Fathers, both before and after my Glorious
Masters Decease." Of this book he says, "The world hath not yet seen such another Piece." Commend me to
the forthright methods of seventeenth century advertisement! In the second part, "Excellent Directions for
Cookery," The Closet Opened was largely drawn on. In 1696 appeared The Family Physician, by George
Hartman, Phylo-Chymist who liv'd and Travell'd with the Honourable Sir Kenelm Digby in several parts of
Europe, the space of Seven Years till he died. This other choice compilation owes much to the "incomparable"
one, and is described as "the marrow of collections."
But Hartman is not the only witness to Digby's connoisseurship in the joint mysteries. Better to my mind than
even Hartman's are the style and the spirit of Master May. In 1660 appeared _The Accomplisht Cook,_ or the
Art and Mystery of Cookery approved by the fifty years experience and industry of Robert May, in his
attendance on Several Persons of Honour. It is dedicated to Lord Lumley, Lord Lovelace, Sir Wm. Paston, Sir
Kenelme Digby, and Sir Frederick Cornwallis, "so well known to the Nation for their admired Hospitalities,"
and generally to
"the race Of those that for the Gusto stand, Whose tables a whole Ark command Of Nature's plentie."
"He is an Alien, a meer Stranger in England that hath not been acquainted with your generous housekeeping;
for my own part, my more particular Tyes of Service to you, my Honoured Lords, have built me up to the

height of this experience." His preface is a heartrending cry of regret for the good old times before usurping
Parliaments banished splendidly extravagant gentlemen across the seas, "those golden days of Peace and
Hospitality, when you enjoy'd your own, so as to entertain and relieve others those golden days wherein
were practised the Triumphs and Trophies of Cookery, then was Hospitality esteemed and Neighbourhood
preserved, the Poor cherished and God honoured; then was Religion less talk't on and more practis't, then was
Atheism and Schisme less in Fashion, and then did men strive to be good rather than to seem so." High-souled
were the chefs of the seventeenth century!
The 1669 edition of The Closet Opened is evidently the first. The interleaved example mentioned in the
Catalogue of the Digby Library is of the same date. Whoever prepared it for the press and wrote the egregious
preface "To the Reader" Hartman, or as I think, another gave it the title; but it was a borrowed one. Some
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 13
years earlier, in 1655, had appeared _The Queen's Closet Opened, Incomparable Secrets which were presented
unto the Queen by the most Experienced Persons of the Times, many wherof were had in Esteem when she
pleased to descend to Private Recreation_. The Queen, of course, is Henrietta Maria, and chief among the
"Experienced Persons" referred to was certainly her Chancellor, Digby. Possibly he may even have suggested
the printing of the collection. Like titles are met with again and again. _Nature's Cabinet Opened_, a medical
work, was attributed to Browne, though he repudiated it. Ruthven's book I have already alluded to. _The
Queen-like Closet_, a Rich Cabinet, by Hannah Wolly, came out in 1670.
Of the two books, the Queen's and her Chancellor's, Digby's has afforded me by far the most delight. Though
many of the receipts are evidently given as sent in, the stamp of his personality is on the whole; and he is the
poet of all these culinary artists. But on the score of usefulness to the housewife I forbear all judgment. The
recipes may be thought extravagant in these late hard times though epicurism has changed rather than
vanished. Lord Bacon's receipt for making "Manus Christi for the Stomach" begins, "Take of the best pearls
very finely pulverised one drachm"; and a health resolution runs, "To take once during supper wine in which
gold is quenched." Costly ingredients such as pearls and leaf gold appear only once among Digby's receipts.
The modern housewife may be aghast at the thought of more than a hundred ways of making mead and
metheglin. Mead recalls to her perhaps her first history-book, wherein she learnt of it as a drink of the
primitive Anglo-Saxons. If she doubt the usefulness of the collection in her own kitchen, let her take the little
volume to her boudoir, and read it there as gossiping notes of the beau monde in the days when James I and
the Charleses ruled the land. She will find herself in lofty company, and on intimate terms with them. They

come down to our level, without any show of condescension. Lords and ladies who were personages of a
solemn state pageant, are now human neighbourly creatures, owning to likes and dislikes, and letting us into
the secrets of their daily habits.
It pleases me to think of Henrietta Maria, in her exile, busying herself in her still-room, and forgetting her
dangers and sorrows in simpling and stilling and kitchen messes; and of her devoted Sir Kenelm, in the
moments when he is neither abeting her Royalist plots, nor diverting her mind to matters of high science, or
the mysteries of the Faith, but bringing to her such lowlier consolations as are hinted in "Hydromel as I made
it weak for the Queen Mother." We are not waiting in a chill ante-chamber when we read, "The Queen's
ordinary Bouillon de Santé in a morning was thus," or of the Pressis which she "used to take at nights of
great yet temperate nourishment instead of a Supper." And who can hint at Court scandals in the face of such
evidence of domesticity as "The Queen useth to baste meat with yolks of fresh eggs, &c." or "The way that the
Countess de Penalva makes the Portuguese eggs for the Queen is this"? We cannot help being interested in the
habits of Lady Hungerford, who "useth to make her mead at the end of summer, when she takes up her Honey,
and begins to drink it in Lent." My Lady Gower and her husband were of independent tastes. Each had their
own receipts. It must be remembered that Dr. Johnson said no woman could write a cookery-book; and he
threatened to write one himself. And Sir Kenelm had many serious rivals among his own sex.
In such an embarras de choix as given by all these drink receipts, we may be in doubt whether to try "My
Lord Gorge's Meath," or "The Countess of Newport's" cherry wine, or "The sweet drink of my Lady Stuart,"
or of Lady Windebanke, or "Sir Paul Neile's way of making cider," or "my Lord Carlisle's Sack posset"; but
one is strongly influenced by such a note as "Sir Edward Bainton's Receipt which my Lord of Portland (who
gave it me) saith, was the best he ever drank." I had thought of Saint-Evremond as warrior and wit, delightful
satirist and letter-writer. But here is a streak of new light upon him: "Monsieur St. Euvremont makes thus his
potage de santé of boiled meat for dinner being very valetudinary When he is in pretty good health, that he
may venture upon more savoury hotter things, &c." The most rigorous Protestants will relax to hear how "To
make a Pan Cotto as the Cardinals use in Rome." And if "My Lord Lumley's Pease Pottage" sounds homely,
be it known, on the word of the eloquent Robert May, that his lordship "wanted no knowledge in the
discerning this mystery." What fastidious simplicity in the taste of the great is suggested by "My Lord
d'Aubigny eats Red-herrings thus boiled"!
But if Sir Kenelm consorted only with the great, it was with the great of all social ranks. It was not merely on
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 14

high questions of science he discoursed with the discoverer of the circulation of the blood witness "Dr.
Harvey's pleasant water cider." Then there was that "Chief Burgomaster of Antwerpe," with whom he must
have been on pretty intimate terms, to learn that he "used for many years to drink no other drink but this
[mead]; at Meals and all times, even for pledging of healths. And though He was an old man, he was of an
extraordinary vigor every way, and had every year a Child, had always a great appetite, and good digestion;
and yet was not fat." Digby was too great a gentleman to be above exchanging receipts with the professors of
the "mystery," such as the Muscovian Ambassador's steward; and when "Master Webbe who maketh the
King's meath," on the 1st of September, 1663, came to his house to make some for him, Sir Kenelm stood by,
a little suspicious lest the other great artist was bamboozling him. He had an eye for all though it may have
been one of his correspondents who says of the remnants of a dish that it "will make good Water-gruel for the
Servants."
The seriousness of the business is tremendous; and to ignore the fine shades in the 106 receipts for mead and
metheglin would have been a frivolity unknown in Digby's circle. There is care; there is conscience; there is
rivalry. The ingredients are mingled with a nice discrimination between the rights of the palate and the
maintenance of health. "Use only Morello cherries (I think) for pleasure, and black ones for health." You may
not wait your own convenience in such serious business. "It is best made by taking all the Canicular days into
your fermentation." Now and again other methods of calculating than ours are used; but "whiles you can say
the Miserere Psalm very leisurely" is as easily computed as "while your Pulse beateth 200 stroaks." Quantities
are a more difficult affair. How is one to know how much smallage was got for a penny in mid-seventeenth
century? The great connoisseur Lord Lumley is very lax, and owns that his are "set down by guess."
It is a curious old world we get glimpses of, at once barbarous, simple, and extravagant, when great ladies
were expected to see to the milking of their cows, as closely as Joan Cromwell supervised her milch-kine in
St. James's Park, and to the cleanliness of their servants' arms and hands, and when huntsmen rode at the
bidding of the cook; for in order that venison be in good condition, "before the deer be killed he ought to be
hunted and chased as much as possible." The perusal of the section, "To Feed Chickens," will shock our
poultry-breeders. "To make them prodigiously fat in about twelve days," "My Lady Fanshawe gives them
strong ale. They will be very drunk and sleep; then eat again. Let a candle stand all night over the coop, and
then they will eat much all the night."
"Lord Denbigh's Almond Marchpane," and the 'current wine' of which it is said "You may drink safely long
draughts of it," will appeal perhaps only to the schoolboy of our weaker generation. Yet there are receipts,

doubtless gathered in Sir Kenelm's later years, that have the cautious invalid in view. Of these are the
"Pleasant Cordial Tablets, which are very comforting and strengthen nature much," and the liquor which is
called "smoothing." "In health you may dash the Potage with a little juyce of Orange" is in the same low key.
The gruels are so many that we must wish Mr. Woodhouse had known of the book. If the admixture of
"wood-sorrel and currens" had seemed to him fraught with peril, he could have fallen back on the "Oatmeal
Pap of Sir John Colladon."
Where are all the old dishes vanished to? Who has ever known "A smoothening Quiddany of Quinces?" Who
can tell the composition of a Tansy? These are tame days when we have forgotten how to make Cock-Ale.
They drank 'Sack with Clove-gilly-flowers' at the "Mermaid," I am sure. What is Bragot? What is Stepony?
And what Slipp-coat Cheese? Ask the baker for a Manchet. The old names call for a _Ballade. Où sont les
mets d'antan?_ And, cooks, with all your exactness about pounds and ounces and minutes of the clock, can
you better directions like these? Watch for "a pale colour with an eye of green." "Let it stand till you may see
your shadow in it"; or "till it begin to blink." Your liquid may boil "simpringly," or "in a great ebullition, in
great galloping waves." "Make a liaison a moment, about an Ave Maria while." And all the significance of the
times and seasons we have lost in our neglect to kill male hogs "in the wane of the moon!" For there is a
lingering of astrology in all this kitchen lore. The irascible Culpeper, Digby's contemporary, poured scorn on
such doctors as knew not the high science, "Physick without astronomy being like a lamp without Oil."
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 15
As for the poetry I promised well, I have been quoting it, have I not? But there is more, and better. Surely it
was a romantic folk that kept in its store-rooms the "best Blew raisins of the sun," or "plumpsome raisins of
the sun," and made its mead with dew, and eagerly exchanged with each other recipes for "Conserve of Red
Roses." And now we come to an essential feature of the whole. It is a cuisine that does not reek of shops and
co-operative stores, but of the wood, the garden, the field and meadow. Like Culpeper's pharmacopeia, it is
made for the most part of "Such Things only as grow in England, they being most fit for English Bodies." Is it
any wonder that the metheglin should be called the "Liquor of Life," which has these among its ingredients:
Bugloss, borage, hyssop, organ, sweet-marjoram, rosemary, French cowslip, coltsfoot, thyme, burnet,
self-heal, sanicle, betony, blew-button, harts-tongue, meadowsweet, liverwort, bistort, St. John's wort, yellow
saunders, balm, bugle, agrimony, tormentilla, comfrey, fennel, clown's allheal, maidenhair, wall-rue,
spleen-wort, sweet oak, Paul's betony, and mouse-ear?
The housewife of to-day buys unrecognisable dried herbs in packets or bottles. In those days she gathered

them in their season out of doors. The companions to The Closet Opened should be the hasty and entertaining
Culpeper, the genial Gerard, and Coles of the delightful Adam in Eden, all the old herbals that were on
Digby's bookshelves, so full of absurdities, so full of pretty wisdom. They will tell you how to mix in your
liquor eglantine for coolness, borage, rosemary, and sweet-marjoram for vigour, and by which planet each
herb or flower is governed. Has our sentiment for the flowers of the field increased now we no longer drink
their essence, or use them in our dishes? I doubt it. It is surely a pardonable grossness that we should desire
the sweet fresh things to become part of us like children, who do indeed love flowers, and eat them. In the
Appendix I have transcribed a list of the plants referred to. Most cooks would be unable to tell one from
another; and even modern herbalists have let many fall out of use, while only a few are on the lists of the
English pharmacopeia. To go simpling once more by field and wood and hedgerow would be a pleasant duty
for country housewives to impose upon themselves; and as to the herbalists' observations on their virtues, we
may say with old Coles, "Most of them I am confident are true, and if there be any that are not so, yet they are
pleasant."
There is an air of flippancy about that reflexion of Coles you will never find in Sir Kenelm. Of the virtues of
each plant and flower he used he was fully convinced; and when he tells of their powers, as in his "Aqua
Mirabilis," the tale is like a solemn litany, and we are reminded of Clarendon's testimony to "the gravity of his
motion." And so, his Closet once more open, he stands at the door, his majesty not greatly lessened; for the
book contains a reminiscence of his rolling eloquence, something of his romance, and not a little of his poetry.
ANNE MACDONELL.
Chelsea, 1910.
THE CLOSET Of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie K^{t}. OPENED:
Whereby is DISCOVERED Several ways for making of _Metheglin, Sider, Cherry-Wine, &c._
TOGETHER WITH Excellent Directions FOR COOKERY:
As also for _Preserving, Conserving, Candying, &c._
* * * * *
Published by his Son's Consent.
* * * * *
London, Printed by _E.C._ for _H. Brome_, at the Star in Little Britain. 1669.
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 16
[_Facsimile of the original title-page._]

TO THE READER
This Collection full of pleasing variety, and of such usefulness in the Generality of it, to the Publique, coming
to my hands, I should, had I forborn the Publication thereof, have trespassed in a very considerable concern
upon my Countrey-men, The like having not in every particular appeared in Print in the English tongue. There
needs no Rhetoricating Floscules to set it off. The Authour, as is well known, having been a Person of
Eminency for his Learning, and of Exquisite Curiosity in his Researches, Even that Incomparable Sir
Kenelme Digbie Knight, Fellow of the Royal Society and Chancellour to the Queen Mother, (Et omen in
Nomine) His name does sufficiently Auspicate the Work. I shall only therefore add, That there is herein (as by
the Table hereunto affix'd will evidently to thee appear) a sufficiency of Solids as well as Liquids for the
sating the Curiosities of each or the nicest Palate; and according to that old Saw in the Regiment of Health,
Incipe cum Liquido, &c. The Liquids premitted to the Solids. These being so Excellent in their kinde, so
beneficial and so well ordered, I think it unhandsome, if not injurious, by the trouble of any further Discourse,
to detain thee any longer from falling to; Fall to therefore, and much good may it do thee,
FARE-WELL.
A RECEIPT TO MAKE METHEGLIN AS IT IS MADE AT LIEGE, COMMUNICATED BY MR.
MASILLON
Take one Measure of Honey, and three Measures of Water, and let it boil till one measure be boiled away, so
that there be left three measures in all; as for Example, take to one Pot of Honey, three Pots of Water, and let
it boil so long, till it come to three Pots. During which time you must Skim it very well as soon as any scum
riseth; which you are to continue till there rise no scum more. You may, if you please, put to it some spice, to
wit, Cloves and Ginger; the quantity of which is to be proportioned according as you will have your Meath,
strong or weak. But this you do before it begin to boil. There are some that put either Yeast of Beer, or Leaven
of bread into it, to make it work. But this is not necessary at all; and much less to set it into the Sun. Mr.
Masillon doth neither the one nor the other. Afterwards for to Tun it, you must let it grow Luke-warm, for to
advance it. And if you do intend to keep your Meathe a long time, you may put into it some hopps on this
fashion. Take to every Barrel of Meathe a Pound of Hops without leaves, that is, of Ordinary Hops used for
Beer, but well cleansed, taking only the Flowers, without the Green-leaves and stalks. Boil this pound of Hops
in a Pot and half of fair water, till it come to one Pot, and this quantity is sufficient for a Barrel of Meathe. A
Barrel at Liege holdeth ninety Pots, and a Pot is as much as a Wine quart in England. (I have since been
informed from Liege, that a Pot of that Countrey holdeth 48 Ounces of Apothecary's measure; which I judge

to be a Pottle according to London measure, or two Wine-quarts.) When you Tun your Meath, you must not
fill your Barrel by half a foot, that so it may have room to work. Then let it stand six weeks slightly stopped;
which being expired, if the Meath do not work, stop it up very close. Yet must you not fill up the Barrel to the
very brim. After six Months you draw off the clear into another Barrel, or strong Bottles, leaving the dregs,
and filling up your new Barrel, or Bottels, and stopping it or them very close.
The Meath that is made this way, (_Viz._ In the Spring, in the Month of April or May, which is the proper
time for making of it,) will keep many a year.
WHITE METHEGLIN OF MY LADY HUNGERFORD: WHICH IS EXCEEDINGLY PRAISED
Take your Honey, and mix it with fair water, until the Honey be quite dissolved. If it will bear an Egge to be
above the liquor, the breadth of a groat, it is strong enough; if not, put more Honey to it, till it be so strong;
Then boil it, till it be clearly and well skimmed; Then put in one good handful of Strawberry-leaves, and half a
handful of Violet leaves; and half as much Sorrel: a Douzen tops of Rosemary; four or five tops of
Baulme-leaves: a handful of Harts-tongue, and a handful of Liver-worth; a little Thyme, and a little Red-sage;
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 17
Let it boil about an hour; then put it into a Woodden Vessel, where let it stand, till it be quite cold; Then put it
into the Barrel; Then take half an Ounce of Cloves, as much Nutmeg; four or five Races of Ginger; bruise it,
and put it into a fine bag, with a stone to make it sink, that it may hang below the middle: Then stop it very
close.
The Herbs and Spices are in proportion for six Gallons.
Since my Lady Hungerford sent me this Receipt, she sent me word, that she now useth (and liketh better) to
make the Decoction of Herbs before you put the Honey to it, This Proportion of Herbs is to make six Gallons
of Decoction, so that you may take eight or nine Gallons of water. When you have drawn out into your water,
all the vertue of the Herbs, throw them away, and take the clear Decoction (leaving the settlings) and when it
is Lukewarm, Dissolve your proportion of Honey in it. After it is well dissolved and laved with strong Arms
or woodden Instruments, like Battle-doors or Scoops, boil it gently; till you have taken away all the scum;
then make an end of well boyling it, about an hour in all. Then pour it into a wooden vessel, and let it stand till
it be cold. Then pour the clear through a Sieve of hair, ceasing pouring when you come to the foul thick
settling. Tun the clear into your vessel (without Barm) and stop it up close, with the Spices in it, till you
perceive by the hissing that it begins to work. Then give it some little vent, else the Barrel would break. When
it is at the end of the working, stop it up close. She useth to make it at the end of Summer, when she takes up

her Honey, and begins to drink it in Lent. But it will be better if you defer piercing it till next Winter. When
part of the Barrel is drunk, she botteleth the rest, which maketh it quicker and better. You clear the Decoction
from the Herbs by a Hair-sieve.
SOME NOTES ABOUT HONEY
The Honey of dry open Countries, where there is much Wild-thyme, Rosemary, and Flowers, is best. It is of
three sorts, Virgin-honey, Life-honey, and Stock-honey. The first is the best. The Life-honey next. The
Virgin-honey is of Bees, that swarmed the Spring before, and are taken up in Autumn; and is made best by
chusing the Whitest combs of the Hive, and then letting the Honey run out of them lying upon a Sieve without
pressing it, or breaking of the Combs. The Life-honey is of the same Combs broken after the Virgin-honey is
run from it; The Merchants of Honey do use to mingle all the sorts together. The first of a swarm is called
Virgin-honey. That of the next year, after the Swarm was hatched, is Life-honey. And ever after, it is Honey
of Old-stocks. Honey that is forced out of the Combs, will always taste of Wax. Hampshire Honey is most
esteemed at London. About Bisleter there is excellent good. Some account Norfolk honey the best.
MR. CORSELLISES ANTWERP MEATH
To make good Meath, good white and thick Marsilian or Provence-honey is best; and of that, to four Holland
Pints (the Holland Pint is very little bigger then the English Wine-pint:) of Water, you must put two pound of
Honey; The Honey must be stirred in Water, till it be all melted; If it be stirred about in warm water, it will
melt so much the sooner.
When all is dissolved, it must be so strong that an Egge may swim in it with the end upwards. And if it be too
sweet or too strong, because there is too much Honey; then you must put more water to it; yet so, that, as
above, an Hens Egge may swim with the point upwards: And then that newly added water must be likewise
well stirred about, so that it may be mingled all alike. If the Eggs sink (which is a token that there is not honey
enough) then you must put more Honey to it, and stir about, till it be all dissolved, and the Eggs swim, as
abovesaid. This being done, it must be hanged over the fire, and as it beginneth to seeth, the scum, that doth
arise upon it, both before and after, must be clean skimed off. When it is first set upon the fire, you must
measure it first with a stick, how deep the Kettel is, or how much Liquor there be in it; and then it must boil so
long, till one third part of it be boiled away. When it is thus boiled, it must be poured out into a Cooler, or
open vessel, before it be tunned in the Barrel; but the Bung-hole must be left open, that it may have vent. A
vessel, which hath served for Sack is best.
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 18

TO MAKE EXCELLENT MEATHE
To every quart of Honey, take four quarts of water. Put your water in a clean Kettle over the fire, and with a
stick take the just measure, how high the water cometh, making a notch, where the superficies toucheth the
stick. As soon as the water is warm, put in your Honey, and let it boil, skiming it always, till it be very clean;
Then put to every Gallon of water, one pound of the best Blew-raisins of the Sun, first clean picked from the
stalks, and clean washed. Let them remain in the boiling Liquor, till they be throughly swollen and soft; Then
take them out, and put them into a Hair-bag, and strain all the juice and pulp and substance from them in an
Apothecaries Press; which put back into your liquor, and let it boil, till it be consumed just to the notch you
took at first, for the measure of your water alone. Then let your Liquor run through a Hair-strainer into an
empty Woodden-fat, which must stand endwise, with the head of the upper-end out; and there let it remain till
the next day, that the liquor be quite cold. Then Tun it up into a good Barrel, not filled quite full, but within
three or four fingers breadth; (where Sack hath been, is the best) and let the bung remain open for six weeks
with a double bolter-cloth lying upon it, to keep out any foulness from falling in. Then stop it up close, and
drink not of it till after nine months.
This Meathe is singularly good for a Consumption, Stone, Gravel, Weak-sight, and many more things. A
Chief Burgomaster of Antwerpe, used for many years to drink no other drink but this; at Meals and all times,
even for pledging of healths. And though He were an old man, he was of an extraordinary vigor every way,
and had every year a Child, had always a great appetite, and good digestion; and yet was not fat.
A WEAKER, BUT VERY PLEASANT, MEATHE
To every quart of Honey take six of water; boil it till 1/3 be consumed, skiming it well all the while. Then
pour it into an open Fat, and let it cool. When the heat is well slakened, break into a Bowl-full of this warm
Liquor, a New-laid-egge, beating the yolk and white well with it; then put it into the Fat to all the rest of the
Liquor, and stir it well together, and it will become very clear. Then pour it into a fit very clean Barrel, and
put to it some Mother of Wine, that is in it's best fermentation or working, and this will make the Liquor work
also. This will be ready to drink in three or four Months, or sooner.
AN EXCELLENT WHITE MEATHE
Take one Gallon of Honey, and four of water; Boil and scum them till there rise no more scum; then put in
your Spice a little bruised, which is most of Cinnamon, a little Ginger, a little Mace, and a very little Cloves.
Boil it with the Spice in it, till it bear an Egge. Then take it from the fire, and let it Cool in a Woodden vessel,
till it be but lukewarm; which this quantity will be in four or five or six hours. Then put into it a hot tost of

White-bread, spread over on both sides, pretty thick with fresh barm; that will make it presently work. Let it
work twelve hours, close covered with Cloves. Then Tun it into a Runlet wherein Sack hath been, that is
somewhat too big for that quantity of Liquor; for example, that it fill it not by a Gallon; You may then put a
little Limon-pill in with it. After it hath remained in the vessel a week or ten days, draw it into Bottles. You
may begin to drink it after two or three Months: But it will be better after a year. It will be very spritely and
quick and pleasant and pure white.
A RECEIPT TO MAKE A TUN OF METHEGLIN
Take two handfuls of Dock (alias wild Carrot) a reasonable burthen of Saxifrage, Wild-sage, Blew-button,
Scabious, Bettony, Agrimony, Wild-marjoram, of each a reasonable burthen; Wild-thyme a Peck, Roots and
all. All these are to be gathered in the fields, between the two Lady days in Harvest. The Garden-herbs are
these; Bay-leaves, and Rosemary, of each two handfuls; a Sieveful of Avens, and as much Violet-leaves: A
handful of Sage; three handfuls of Sweet-Marjoram, Three Roots of young Borrage, leaves and all, that hath
not born seed; Two handfuls of Parsley-roots, and all that hath not born Seed. Two Roots of Elecampane that
have not seeded: Two handfuls of Fennel that hath not seeded: A peck of Thyme; wash and pick all your herbs
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 19
from filth and grass: Then put your field herbs first into the bottom of a clean Furnace, and lay all your
Garden-herbs thereon; then fill your Furnace with clean water, letting your herbs seeth, till they be so tender,
that you may easily slip off the skin of your Field-herbs, and that you may break the roots of your
Garden-herbs between your Fingers. Then lade forth your Liquor, and set it a cooling. Then fill your Furnace
again with clear water to these Herbs, and let them boil a quarter of an hour. Then put it to your first Liquor,
filling the Furnace, until you have sufficient to fill your Tun. Then as your Liquor begins to cool, and is
almost cold, set your servants to temper Honey and wax in it, Combs and all, and let them temper it well
together, breaking the Combes very small; let their hands and nails be very clean; and when you have
tempered it very well together, cleanse it through a cleansing sieve into another clean vessel; The more Honey
you have in your Liquor, the stronger it will be. Therefore to know, when it is strong enough, take two
New-laid eggs, when you begin to cleanse, and put them in whole into the bottome of your cleansed Liquor;
And if it be strong enough, it will cause the Egge to ascend upward, and to be on the top as broad as sixpence;
if they do not swim on the top; put more.
THE COUNTESS OF BULLINGBROOK'S WHITE METHEGLIN
Take eight Gallons of Conduit-water, and boil it very well; then put as much Honey in it, as will bear an Egge,

and stir it well together. Then set it upon the fire, and put in the whites of four Eggs to clarifie it; And as the
scum riseth, take it off clean: Then put in a pretty quantity of Rosemary, and let it boil, till it tasteth a little of
it: Then with a scummer take out the Rosemary, as fast as you can, and let it boil half a quarter of an hour; put
it into earthen pans to cool; next morning put it into a barrel, and put into it a little barm, and an Ounce of
Ginger scraped and sliced; And let it stand a Month or six Weeks. Then bottle it up close; you must be sure
not to let it stand at all in Brass.
MR. WEBBES MEATH
Master Webbe, who maketh the Kings Meathe, ordereth it thus. Take as much of Hyde-park water as will
make a Hogshead of Meathe: Boil in it about two Ounces of the best Hopp's for about half an hour. By that
time, the water will have drawn out the strength of the Hopp's. Then skim them clean off, and all the froth, or
whatever riseth of the water. Then dissolve in it warm, about one part of Honey to six of water: Lave and beat
it, till all the Honey be perfectly dissolved; Then boil it, beginning gently, till all the scum be risen, and
scummed away. It must boil in all about two hours. Half an hour, before you end your boiling, put into it some
Rosemary-tops, Thyme, Sweet-marjorame, one Sprig of Minth, in all about half a handful, and as much
Sweet-bryar-leaves as all these; in all, about a handful of herbs, and two Ounces of sliced Ginger, and one
Ounce of bruised Cinamon. He did use to put in a few Cloves and Mace; But the King did not care for them.
Let all these boil about half an hour, then scum them clean away; and presently let the Liquor run through a
strainer-cloth into a Kiver of wood, to cool and settle. When you see it is very clear and settled, lade out the
Liquor into another Kiver, carefully, not to raise the settlings from the bottom. As soon as you see any dregs
begin to rise, stay your hand, and let it remain unstirred, till all be settled down. Then lade out the Liquor
again, as before; and if need be, change it again into another Kiver: all which is done to the end no dregs may
go along with the Liquor in tunning it into the vessel. When it is cold and perfect clear, tun it into a Cask, that
hath been used for Sack, and stop it up close, having an eye to give it a little vent, if it should work. If it cast
out any foul Liquor in working, fill it up always presently with some of the same liquor, that you have kept in
bottles for that end. When it hath wrought, and is well settled (which may be in about two months or ten
weeks) draw it into Glass-bottles, as long as it comes clear; and it will be ready to drink in a Month or two:
but will keep much longer, if you have occasion: and no dregs will be in the bottom of the bottle.
He since told me, that to this Proportion of Honey and water, to make a Hogshead of Meathe, you should boil
half a pound of Hopps in the water, and two good handfuls of Herbs; and six Ounces of Spice of all sorts: All
which will be mellowed and rotted away quite, (as well as the lushiousness of the Honey) in the space of a

year or two. For this is to be kept so long before it be drunk.
Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened, The 20
If you would have it sooner ready to drink, you may work it with a little yeast, when it is almost cold in the
Kiver: and Tun it up as soon as it begins to work, doing afterwards as is said before; but leaving a little vent to
purge by, till it have done working. Or in stead of yeast, you may take the yolks of four New-laid-eggs, and
almost half a pint of fine Wheat-flower, and some of the Liquor you have made: beat them well together, then
put them to the Liquor in the Cask, and stop it up close, till you see it needful, to give it a little vent.
Note, that yeast of good Beer, is better then that of Ale.
* * * * *
The first of Septemb. 1663. Mr. Webb came to my House to make some for Me. He took fourty three Gallons
of water, and fourty two pounds of Norfolk honey. As soon as the water boiled, He put into it a slight handful
of Hops; which after it had boiled a little above a quarter of an hour, he skimed off; then put in the honey to
the boyling water, and presently a white scum rose, which he skimed off still as it rose; which skiming was
ended in little above a quarter of an hour more. Then he put in his herbs and spices, which were these:
Rose-mary, Thyme, Winter-savory, Sweet-marjoram, Sweet-bryar-leaves, seven or eight little Parsley-roots:
There was most of the Savoury, and least of the Eglantine, three Ounces of Ginger, one Ounce and a half of
Cinnamon, five Nutmegs (half an Ounce of Cloves he would have added, but did not,) And these boiled an
hour and a quarter longer; in all from the first beginning to boil, somewhat less then two hours: Then he
presently laded it out of the Copper into Coolers, letting it run through a Hair-sieve: And set the Coolers
shelving (tilted up) that the Liquor might afterwards run the more quietly out of them. After the Liquor had
stood so about two hours, he poured or laded out of some of the Coolers very gently, that the dregs might not
rise, into other Coolers. And about a pint of very thick dregs remained last in the bottom of every Cooler. That
which ran out, was very clear: After two hours more settling, (in a shelving situation,) He poured it out again
into other Coolers; and then very little dregs (or scarce any in some of the Coolers) did remain. When the
Liquor was even almost cold, He took the yolks of three New-laid-eggs, a spoonful of fine white flower, and
about half a pint of new fresh barm of good strong Beer (you must have care that your barm be very white and
clean, not sullied and foul, as is usual among slovenly Brewers in London). Beat this very well together, with
a little of the Liquor in a skiming dish, till you see it well incorporated, and that it beginneth to work. Then put
it to a pailful (of about two Gallons and a half) of the Liquor, and mingle it well therewith. Then leave the
skiming dish reversed floating in the middle of the Liquor, and so the yest will work up into and under the

hollow of the dish, and grow out round about the sides without. He left this well and thick covered all night,
from about eleven a clock at night; And the next morning, finding it had wrought very well, He mingled what
was in the Pail with the whole proportion of the Liquor, and so Tunned it up into a Sack-cask. I am not
satisfied, whether he did not put a spoonful of fine white good Mustard into his Barm, before he brought it
hither, (for he took a pretext to look out some pure clean white barm) but he protested, there was nothing
mingled with the barm, yet I am in doubt. He confessed to me that in making of Sider, He put's in half as
much Mustard as Barm; but never in Meathe. The fourth of September in the morning, he Bottled up into
Quart-bottles the two lesser Rundlets of this Meathe (for he did Tun the whole quantity into one large
Rundlet, and two little ones) whereof the one contained thirty Bottles; and the other, twenty two. There
remained but little settling or dregs in the Bottom's of the Barrels, but some there was. The Bottles were set
into a cool Cellar, and He said they would be ready to drink in three weeks. The Proportion of Herbs and
Spices is this; That there be so much as to drown the luscious sweetness of the Honey; but not so much as to
taste of herbs or spice, when you drink the Meathe. But that the sweetnes of the honey may kill their taste:
And so the Meathe have a pleasant taste, but not of herbs, nor spice, nor honey. And therefore you put more or
less according to the time you will drink it in. For a great deal will be mellowed away in a year, that would be
ungratefully strong in three months. And the honey that will make it keep a year or two, will require a triple
proportion of spice and herbs. He commends Parsley roots to be in greatest quantity, boiled whole, if young;
but quarterred and pithed, if great and old.
MY OWN CONSIDERATIONS FOR MAKING OF MEATHE
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Boil what quantity of Spring-water you please, three or four walms, and then let it set the twenty four hours,
and pour the clear from the settling. Take sixteen Gallons of the clear, and boil in it ten handfuls of
Eglantine-leaves, five of Liverwort, five of Scabious, four of Baulm, four of Rosemary; two of Bay-leaves;
one of Thyme, and one of Sweet-marjoram, and five Eringo-roots splitted. When the water hath drawn out the
vertue of the herbs (which it will do in half an hours boiling,) let it run through a strainer or sieve, and let it
settle so, that you may pour the clear from the Dregs. To every three Gallons of the Clear, take one of Honey,
and with clean Arms stripped up, lade it for two or three hours, to dissolve the honey in the water; lade it
twice or thrice that day. The next day boil it very gently to make the scum rise, and scum it all the while, and
now and then pour to it a ladle full of cold water, which will make the scum rise more: when it is very clear
from scum, you may boil it the more strongly, till it bear an Egge very high, that the breadth of a groat be out

of the water, and that it boil high with great walms in the middle of the Kettle: which boiling with great
Bubbles in the middle is a sign it is boiled to it's height. Then let it cool till it be Lukewarm, at which time put
some Ale yest into it, to make it work, as you would do Ale. And then put it up into a fit Barrel first seasoned
with some good sweet White-wine (as Canary-sack) and keep the bung open, till it have done working, filling
it up with some such honey-drink warmed, as you find it sink down by working over. When it hath almost
done working, put into it a bag of thin stuff (such as Bakers use to bolt in) fastened by a Cord at the bung,
containing two parts of Ginger-sliced, and one apiece of Cinamon, Cloves and Nutmegs, with a Pebble-stone
in it to make it sink; And stop it up close for six Months or a year, and then you may draw it into bottles. If
you like Cardamon-seeds, you may adde some of them to the spices. Some do like Mint exceedingly to be
added to the other herbs. Where no yeast is to be had, The Liquor will work if you set it some days in the hot
Sun (with a cover, like the roof of a house over it, to keep wet out, if it chance to rain) but then you must have
great care, to fill it up, as it consumeth, and to stop it close a little before it hath done working, and to set it
then presently in a Cool Cellar. I am told that the Leaven of bread will make it work as well as yest, but I have
not tryed it. If you will not have it so strong, it will be much sooner ready to drink; As if you take six parts of
water to one of Honey. Some do like the drink better without either herbs or spices, and it will be much the
whiter. If you will have it stronger, put but four Gallons and a half of water to one of honey.
You may use what Herbs or Roots you please, either for their tast or vertue, after the manner here set down.
If you make it work with yeast, you must have great care, to draw it into bottles soon after it hath done
working, as after a fortnight or three weeks. For that will make it soon grow stale, and it will thence grow
sower and dead before you are aware. But if it work singly of itself, and by help of the Sun without admixtion
of either Leaven or Yeast, it may be kept long in the Barrel, so it be filled up to the top, and kept very close
stopp'd.
I conceive it will be exceeding good thus: when you have a strong Honey-liquor of three parts of water to one
of Honey, well-boiled and scummed, put into it Lukewarm, or better (as soon as you take it from the fire)
some Clove-gilly-flowers, first wiped, and all the whites clipped off, one good handful or two to every Gallon
of Liquor. Let these infuse 30 or 40 hours. Then strain it from the flowers, and either work it with yeast, or set
it in the Sun to work; when it hath almost done working, put into it a bag of like Gilly-flowers (and if they are
duly dried, I think they are the better) hanging it in at the bung. And if you will put into it some spirit of wine,
that hath drawn a high Tincture from Clove-gilly-flowers (dried I conceive is best) and some other that hath
done the like from flowers and tops of Rosemary, and some that hath done the like from Cinnamon and

Ginger, I believe it will be much the nobler, and last the longer.
I conceive, that bitter and strong herbs, as Rosemary, Bayes, Sweet-marjoram, Thyme, and the like, do
conserve Meathe the better and longer, being as it were in stead of hops. But neither must they, no more than
Clove-gilly-flowers, be too much boiled: For the Volatil pure Spirit flies away very quickly. Therefore rather
infuse them. Beware of infusing Gillyflower in any vessel of Metal, (excepting silver:) For all Metals will
spoil and dead their colour. Glased earth is best.
SACK WITH CLOVE-GILLY FLOWERS
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If you will make a Cordial Liquor of Sack with Clove-gilly-flowers, you must do thus. Prepare your
Gilly-flowers, as is said before, and put them into great double glass-bottles, that hold two gallons a piece, or
more; and put to every gallon of Sack, a good half pound of the wiped and cut flowers, putting in the flowers
first, and then the Sack upon them. Stop the glasses exceeding close, and set them in a temperate Cellar. Let
them stand so, till you see that the Sack hath drawn out all the principal tincture from them, and that the
flowers begin to look palish; (with an eye of pale, or faint in Colour) Then pour the Sack from them, and
throw away the exhausted flowers, or distil a spirit from them; For if you let them remain longer in the Sack,
they will give an earthy tast to them. You may then put the tincted Sack into fit bottles for your use, stopping
them very close. But if the season of the flowers be not yet past, your Sack will be better, if you put it upon
new flowers, which I conceive will not be the worse, but peradventure the better, if they be a little dried in the
shade. If you drink a Glass or two of this sack at a meal, you will find it a great Cordial.
Upon better consideration; I conceive the best way of making Hydromel with Clove-gilly-flowers, is thus:
Boil your simple Liquor to its full height (with three parts of water to one of Honey), take a small parcel out,
to make a strong infusion of flowers, pouring it boyling hot upon the flowers in earthen vessels. If you have
great quantity, as six to one, of Liquor, you will easily draw out the tincture in fourteen or sixteen hours
infusion; otherwise you may quicken your liquor with a parcel of Sack. In the mean time make the great
quantity of Liquor work with yest. When it hath almost done fermenting, but not quite, put the infusion to it
warm, and let it ferment more if it will. When that is almost done, put to it a bag with flowers to hang in the
bung.
I conceive that Hydromel made with Juniper-berries (first broken and bruised) boiled in it, is very good. Adde
also to it Rosemary and Bay-leaves.
Upon tryal of several ways, I conclude (as things yet appear to me) that to keep Meath long, it must not be

fermented with yest (unless you put Hops to it) but put it in the barrel, and let it ferment of it self, keeping a
thick plate of lead upon the bung, to lie close upon it, yet so that the working of the Liquor may raise it, to
purge out the foulness, and have always some new made plain Liquor, to fill it up as it sinks, warm whiles it
works: but cold during three or four month's after. Then stop the bung exceeding close. And when you will
make your Mead with Cherries or Morello-Cherries, or Raspes, or Bilberries, or Black-cherries, put their
juyce to the Liquor when you tun it, without ever boiling it therein; about one quart of juyce to every three or
four gallons of Liquor. You may squeese out the clear juyce, and mingle it with the Liquor, and hang the
Magma in a bag in the bung. I think it is best to break the stones of the Cherries, before you put their Magma
into the bag.
Since I conceive, that Clove-gilly-flowers must never be boiled in the Liquor: that evaporateth their Spirits,
which are very volatile: But make a strong infusion of them, and besides hang a Bag of them in the bung. I
conceive that it is good to make the Liquor pretty strong (not too much, but so as the taste may be gratefull) of
some strong herbs, as Rosemary, Bay-leaves, Sweet-marjoram, Thyme, Broad-thyme, and the like. For they
preserve the drink, and make it better for the stomack and head. Standing in the Sun is the best way of
Fermentation, when the drink is strong. The root of Angelica or Elecampane, or Eringo, or Orris, may be good
and pleasant, to be boiled in the Liquor. Raspes and Cherries and Bilberies are never to be boiled, but their
juyce put into the Liquor, when it is tunning. Use onely Morello-Cherries (I think) for pleasure, and black
ones for health. I conceive it best to use very little spice of any kind in Meathes.
METHEGLIN COMPOSED BY MY SELF OUT OF SUNDRY RECEIPTS
In sixty Gallons of water, boil ten handfuls of Sweet-bryar-leaves; Eye-bright, Liverwort, Agrimony,
Scabious, Balme, Wood-bettony, Strawberry-leaves, Burnet, of each four handfuls; of Rosemary, three
handfuls; of Minth, Angelica, Bayes and Wild-thyme, Sweet-Marjoram, of each two handfuls: Six
Eringo-roots. When the water hath taken out the vertue of the herbs and roots, let it settle, and the next day
pour off the clear, and in every three Gallons of it boil one of honey, scumming it well, and putting in a little
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cold water now and then to make the scum rise, as also some whites of Eggs. When it is clear scummed, take
it off, and let it cool; then work it with Ale-yest; tun it up, and hang it in a bag, with Ginger, Cinamom, Cloves
and Cardamom. And as it worketh over, put in some strong honey-drink warmed. When it works no more,
stop it up close.
In twenty Gallons of water boil Sweet-bryar-leaves, Eye-bright, Rosemary, Bayes, Clove-gilly-flowers of

each five handfuls, and four Eringo-roots. To every two gallons and a half of this decoction, put one gallon of
honey; boil it, &c. When it is tunned up, hang in it a bag containing five handfuls of Clove-gilly-flowers, and
sufficient quantity of the spices above.
In both these Receipts, the quantity of the herbs is too great. The strong herbs preserve the drink, and make it
nobler. Use Marjoram and Thyme in little quantity in all.
MY LADY COWERS WHITE MEATHE USED AT SALISBURY
Take to four Gallons of water, one Gallon of Virgin-honey; let the water be warm before you put in the honey;
and then put in the whites of 3 or 4 Eggs well beaten, to make the scum rise. When the honey is throughly
melted and ready to boil, put in an Egge with the shell softly; and when the Egge riseth above the water, to the
bigness of a groat in sight, it is strong enough of the honey. The Egge will quickly be hard, and so will not
rise; Therefore you must put in another, if the first do not rise to your sight; you must put in more water and
honey proportionable to the first, because of wasting away in the boiling. It must boil near an hour. You may,
if you please, boil in it, a little bundle of Rosemary, Sweet-marjoram, and Thyme; and when it tasteth to your
liking, take it forth again. Many do put Sweet-bryar berries in it, which is held very good. When your Meath is
boiled enough take it off the fire, and put it into a Kiver; when it is blood-warm, put in some Ale-barm, to
make it work, and cover it close with a blancket in the working. The next morning tun it up, and if you please
put in a bag with a little Ginger and a little Nutmeg bruised; and when it hath done working, stop it up close
for a Moneth, and then Bottle it.
SIR THOMAS GOWER'S METHEGLIN FOR HEALTH
First boil the water and scum it; Then to 12 Gallons put 6 handfuls of Sweet-bryar-leaves, of Sweet-marjoram,
Rosemary, Thyme, of each one a handful: Flowers of Marigold, Borrage, Bugloss, Sage, each two handfuls.
Boil all together very gently, till a third waste. To eight Gallons of this put two Gallons of pure honey, and
boil them till the Liquor bear an Egge, the breadth of threepence or a Groat, together with such spices as you
like (bruised, but not beaten) an ounce of all is sufficient.
You must observe carefully. 1. Before you set the Liquor to boil, to cause a lusty Servant (his Arms well
washed) to mix the honey and water together, labouring it with his hands at least an hour without
intermission. 2. That when it begins to boil fast, you take away part of the fire, so as it may boil slowly, and
the scum and dross go all to one side, the other remaining clear. When you take it off, let none of the liquor go
away with the dross. 3. When you take it from the fire, let it settle well, before it be tunned into the vessel,
wherein you mean to keep it: and when it comes near the bottom, let it be taken carefully from the sediment,

with a thin Dish, so as nothing be put into the vessel, but what is clear. 4. Stop it very close (when it is set in
the place, where it must remain) cover it with a cloth, upon which some handfuls of Bay-salt and Salpeter is
laid, and over that lay clay, and a Turf. 5. Put into it, when you stop it, some New-laid-eggs in number
proportionable to the bigness of the vessel, Shell's unbroken. Six Eggs to about sixteen Gallons. The whole
Egg-shell and all will be entirely consumed.
METHEGLIN FOR TASTE AND COLOUR
Must be boiled as the other, if you intend to keep it above half a year; but less according to the time, wherein
you mean to use it. You must put in no Herbs, to avoid bitterness and discolouring; and the proportion of
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water and honey more or less, as you would drink it sooner or later; (as a Gallon of honey to 4, 5, or 6 of
water.) If to be weak, and to be soon drunk, you must when it is tunned, put in a Tost of bread (hard tosted)
upon which half a score drops of Spirit of yest or barm is dropped; for want of it, spread it with purest barm
beaten with a few drops of Oyl of Cinnamon. If you intend to give it the taste of Raspes, then adde more
barm, to make it work well, and during that time of working, put in your Raspes (or their Syrup) but the fruit
gives a delicate Colour, and Syrup a duller Tincture. Drink not that made after the first manner, till six
moneths, and it will endure drawing better then wine; but Bottleled, it is more spirited then any drink.
The Spirit of Barm is made by putting store of water to the barm; then distill the Spirit, as you do other
Spirits; At last an oyl will come, which is not for this use.
Sir Thomas Gower maketh his ordinary drink thus: Make very small well Brewed Ale. To eight Gallons of
this put one Gallon of honey; when it is well dissolved and clarified, tun up the Liquor, making it work in due
manner with barm. When it hath done working, stop it up close, and in three months it will be fit to drink.
He makes Metheglin thus. Make a good Decoct of Eglantine-leaves, Cowslip flowers, a little
Sweet-marjoram, and some Rosemary and Bay-leaves, Betony, and Scabious, and a little Thyme. After the
sediment hath settled, put 1/3 or 1/4 or 1/5 or 1/6 part of honey, (according as you would have it strong, and
soon ready) to the clear severed from the settlement, and stir it exceeding well with stripped arms 4 or 5 hours,
till it be perfectly incorporated. Then boil and scum it; let it then cool and tun it up, &c. After it hath cooled,
lade the clean from the settlement, so that it may not trouble it, and run up the clear thus severed from the
settlings. Much of the perfection consisteth in stirring it long with stripped arms before you boil it. Then to
boil it very leisurely till all the scum be off. And order your fire so, that the scum may rise and drive all to one
side. This will be exceeding pale clear and pleasant Metheglin. He useth to every Gallon of water, a good

handful of Eglantine-leaves, and as much Cowslip flowers; but onely a Pugil of Thyme or Marjoram.
AN EXCELLENT WAY OF MAKING WHITE METHEGLIN
Take of Sweet-bryar berries, of Rosemary, broad Thyme, of each a handful. Boil them in a quantity of fair
water for half an hour; then cleanse the water from the herbs, and let it stand 24 hours, until it be thorough
cold. Then put your hony into it (hony which floweth from the Combs of it self in a warm place is best) make
it so strong of the honey that it bear an egge (if you will have it strong) the breadth of a groat above the
Liquor. This being done, lave and bounce it very well and often, that the honey and water may incorporate and
work well together. After this boil it softly over a gentle fire, and scum it. Then beat the whites of eggs with
their shells, and put into it to clarifie it. After this, put some of it into a vessel, and take the whites of two eggs,
and a little barm, and a small quantity of fine flower; beat them well together, and put it into the vessel close
covered, that it may work. Then pour the rest into it by degrees, as you do Beer. At last take a quantity of
Cinamon, 2 or 3 races of Ginger, and two Nutmegs (for more will alter the colour of it.) Hang these in a little
bag in the vessel. Thus made, it will be as white as any White-wine.
ANOTHER WAY OF MAKING WHITE METHEGLIN
To three Gallons of Spring-water take three quarts of honey, and set it over the fire, till the scum rises pretty
thick. Then take off the scum, and put in Thyme, Rosemary, Hyssop and Maiden-hair, of each one handful;
and two handfuls of Eglantine leaves, and half a handful of Organ. The spices, Ginger, Nutmegs, Cinamon
and a little mace, and boil all these together near half an hour. Then take it from the fire, and let it stand till it
be cold, and then strain it, and so Tun it up, and stop it close. The longer you keep it, the better it will be.
ANOTHER WAY
Take two Gallons of water; one Gallon of Honey: Parietary one handful; Sage, Thyme, one Pugil; Of Hyssop
half a Pugil. Six Parsley-roots; one Fennel-root, the pith taken out: Red-nettles one Pugil. Six leaves of
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